Monday, March 8, 2010

Athens Strobist Meet - February

We had another strobist meet and this time it was indoors. Since it's winter, the concern has been the weather. In the previous months we've shot in cold or rainy weather. This month Steven organized an indoor meet. Of course we had great weather and could've done an outdoor shoot.
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We wanted to get several setups in this one room and I think we ended up with 4 or 5. The white seamless was the main attraction, due to the amount of lights and also because it's such a slick look. Steven was able to book 4 models from SSP Models (no connection to [ssp]* studios).
We had a great turnout as there were 20 open spots and they were sold out weeks in advance. The white seamless was setup using Zack Arias' tutorial. It was a three light setup. 2 Alien Bees were aimed to light up the background. The key light was in a 50" Wescott Apollo Soft Box.
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I used Zack's technique for post processing to get more options from the shots. I didn't shoot a lot, but I'm happy with the images I got. I prefer to shoot on location, as it gives me more options for backgrounds. In a situation like this meet, with 20 shooters, it's very difficult to get something unique. Everyone's images look exactly the same, especially when the lighting has already been setup. I'm glad to have been a part of this, because it was a learning experience. It's a very popular look and style and at some point a client is going to want this and I now know exactly how to accomplish this.

The next setup was with a black background. This was a 2 light setup with umbrellas.
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At one point Steven went outside for some quick shots. I helped him with some gear and grabbed a few shots of my own.
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The outside shots were my favorite. These were all at the same location, but by changing the angle I was shooting and my position, it gave me a variety of different shots. Doing a studio type shoot and location shoot helped me realize what I really like. In a perfect world, doing both styles would be ideal, but if I had to choose only one, it would be a location shoot.

Thanks to Steven Skelton for another successful strobist meet. He put in a lot of time and effort setting up the location and coordinating models.

Steven also launched a blog just for these meets. He'll be posting video and images from the event soon. Steven also asked me to contribute to the blog. We're still talking about content, but we're trying to provide content on a weekly basis. I'll let you know via Facebook & Twitter when I've contributed to the  Athens Strobist blog. If you've got content, questions or ideas that you'd want me to go over on the blog, let me know.

I shot some behind the scenes from this meet and haven't had a chance to edit or upload. I'm hoping to do that in a couple of days.

If you're looking for a portrait photographer in the Atlanta area, visit my portfolio.

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